


prices paid in diamond shards

by temporalDecay



Series: distrait shorts [19]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fucked Up Moirails, Gamzee's Bizarre Fuckery, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Serendipity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 04:39:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3754891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1970724/chapters/4265157"><em>Bound For Past The Grave</em></a>, Karkat and Gamzee end up sorting out their shit.</p><p>Only not really, because this is Gamzee "I Cannot Be Fucking Honest If My Life Depended On It" Makara, and Karkat "Oh God Just Give Me This One Thing For Fuck's Sake I Deserve It" Vantas. </p><p>Or, just because something is serendipitous doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	prices paid in diamond shards

**Author's Note:**

> ...I am so, so sorry.
> 
> I also fucking hate Gamzee's POV. So hard. Words, Gamzee, words do not work that way.

“She’s not gone,” you told the Empress, whose eyes were awash with tears, and reached down to kiss them away, one by one, “she’s waiting for the motherfucking curtain drop.” 

She was too shocked and too scared and too saddened to shove you away and sink her culling fork into your eyes over the offense. Instead she looked at you, eyes narrowed and almost shrewd, and for a moment she understood. And then you laughed and her face betrayed fear, just a sliver of it, but just a sliver’s all you’ll ever need. That’s how you knew it was going to go the way you needed it to, more so than how you’d have wanted it to. 

“I’ll be up and motherfucking seeing you, my most imperial of sisters,” you giggled, adding the overdone reverence because she wasn’t really expecting it. 

“But Karkat—“ she began, and didn’t end, not because you interrupted, but because she’s too damn self-conscious about things she needn’t be. Was and is and has always and will always be. 

It’s one of those hilarious jokes that are only funny so long as you don’t point them out; those who get them do, does who don’t, don’t. 

“When my palebro needs me, he be knowing the roundabout and the straightforward most way to find me.” 

Then you left. 

No one stopped you. 

The world was in shock, the actors feeling like the script was switched midway without warning. You left, unruffled and amused, because you’re the only one who knew and didn’t care. 

Karkat didn’t reach out for you, that day or the next one. A week, a perigee, a whole sweep. You’ve gone about doing your business, laughing along the clowns who mimic your words but never understand your intent. You kill and you pray, and enjoy the silence in the backdrop, the lack of nagging whispers you never really heard but now feel the absence of anyway. 

You hear the official story one day; laugh yourself hoarse for weeks when you piece it together. 

And still, the silence goes on, near deafening in your awareness, as you paint the world to your liking, one brushstroke at the time. A sweep, then two, then five. 

Why would you be salty about waiting more than a decade to see Karkat again? When you’re going to live so fucking long? When you know exactly how it plays out? There are some things that not even the most tenuous moonlight pale serendipitosity can change; you can’t do nothing to help until Karkat himself is ready to let you help. So you keep your distance, present but unobtrusive, like a great constant in the universe, laughing every now and then, at the way the story changes and the legend becomes more solid and defined. 

If the fish bitch could see his legacy, you’d think he’d go and die all over again. 

So you kick it back and wait, because if there’s one motherfucking thing you’ve accrued over the fucking centuries of playing this insipid charade, it’s patience. And it serves you well, for all you’ve tried to keep it to yourself. You argue with the pissblood in the wires. You chase and taunt your furrocious kittycat. You withstand every stare down from your magical winged flushed bro. And through it all, you let it fester and you let it bloom on its own, because it doesn’t need you to reach breaking point. 

“You never sought me out,” Karkat says, the day he finally storms up across your ship, unannounced and uninvited, sending your clowns cowering in a riot of confused shrieks, as he finally stands before your throne, eyes hollowed and soul dark. “You just… you never even tried to—“ 

“You didn’t want me then,” you say, in the softest, kindest tones, as you push yourself up and off the altar of bones that your Ancestor built up to honor your Gods. “A motherfucker be getting his righteous understanding that you needed space.” 

“You lied to me,” Karkat accuses, with the voice all executors in the long annals of the faith wished they could command, “you massacred all those innocent people, and you… you _lied_ to me.” 

Karkat stares up at you through twin stars of the sickest red the world can come up with. His lips tremble and his body shakes, dissonant with each other and still both dancing to the same erratic rhythm of his broken heart. You come to stand before him and fold yourself down to your haunches, arms on your knees, smile almost kind. 

“Yes.” 

Karkat splutters, eyes wide, flails and doesn’t all at once. He wants to scream and he wants to run away, and all he manages is to stare at you, those righteously miraculous jewels stuck on his face glinting with incomprehension. 

“I,” you begin, voice dropping to that level tone he so rarely hears – that no one else’s gets to know it’s in your possession – as you lean in, not quite looming, “be loving a motherfucker more than anything else in the godforsaken universe we got.” You run a finger down his face, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, because it is the purest, holiest pale that binds you both, and you’ve known this truth since long before you knew the Truth. “I be loving you enough to hurt you, so no one else does. I’ll tear off a hand,” you go on, almost dreamily, “if it means no motherfucker gets to tear off your head. And then I will make them pay, flesh for flesh, blood for blood, for the harm they brought upon your head.” 

Karkat wraps a hand around your finger, eyes threatening to close, despite it all. He takes a deep breath, then another, and it’s wet underneath, with tears he’s been bottling up for godawful long enough. 

“Why.” 

It’s not even a question, really. It’s more like a demand, hidden behind the whisper. Tired and sore, all worn out inside. You pull him into your arms and he goes, docile and boneless, because he can feel it, you’re sure, the same pulse of soft, melodious pale, forcing it all back into frame. 

“Because you’re worth it,” you say, soft and sweet, pressing your forehead to his, “because I chose _you_.” 

And then Karkat laughs, like tears woven into bells, and it’s the more miraculous sound you’ve ever heard, because he understands. More than the Empress who allowed it to happen, or the fools who played the Handmaid’s games just because. Karkat laughs and cries and you hold him close, claws brushing his hair, and know deep down it will work out in the end. 

“You’re going to do it again, aren’t you?” Karkat whispers, reaching out to hold your face in his hands. “You’re going to break my heart all over again.” 

“I’ll cut the hand,” you repeat, tilting your head so you can press your lips to his fingers, tender like hooks aiming for his soul. “But I won’t let them cut your head.” 

“I tried to not love you anymore,” Karkat laughs again, digging in his claws into your skin, before petting the marks away. They don’t even bleed. “I tried to hate you and not want you anymore. It’s not fair.” 

“It’s not,” you agree, purring out the words lovingly, “it’s fucked up and it’s going to shit, my palest motherfucking star of providence. But when we’re standing in the ashes, and breathing hurts like a motherfucking sin, you know I loved you enough to keep you whole.” And then, because you’re a bastard of the worst caliber, because you know too much and never enough, and you love him truly more than you love anything else, because he’s the altar upon which you offer your prayers to your Gods, you add: “He’ll be back.” 

Karkat goes quiet and still, eyes widening because he’s been infected by that insidious, festering plague: Hope. You could cure him, but he’ll be stronger, in the end, because of it, so you don’t. You kiss him then, long and slow, because you’re his far more than he’s yours, and it’s always good to remind him of the fact. 

“One day,” you promise, and there’s something in the cadence of the words, falling like pebbles on a pond, ripples of prophecy clinging to them, “I’ll cut the hand, and you’ll have him back, if you want him.” 

“What if you cut the hand,” Karkat retorts, his fear a drug tempting your senses, “and I bleed out? What if—“ 

“You’re stronger than that,” you reassure him, brushing hair off his face, so you can press your lips to it in slow, reverent worship. “You’re too strong for that.” 

“It’d be easier,” he says, voice hoarse, “if I could hate you.” 

You take his surrender in stride, chuckling low as he traces the contours of the face you’ve drawn on your skin, as if he could summon your true one from beneath it all. It’s not the loud, angry laughter you use to spice up sermons and make clowns and infidels quiver in your present. It’s softer, shapeless, like a burst of genuine amusement chained down by bitterness and pride. It’s the beginning and the end, that laugh, the one only Karkat has ever heard, will ever hear. You surrender back, a simultaneous throw-down of weapons choreographed to the smallest detail, and yet unforgivable and unrepentant all at once. 

“Ain’t that the truest shit you’ve ever spoke?” You sigh. “Will you at least trust a brother, when he promises you it’ll be alright? Come the last act, the pieces fall into place and it’s all worth it in the end.” 

He’s supposed to take your grain of salt and run away with it, cradle it close and cherish it until it glitters like diamond dust. He’s not supposed to tilt your face up, push back enough to have enough space to breathe and then look into you and See. 

“Gamzee,” he says, tired and yet not enough to let it go, to take the easy way out even after bemoaning the lack of it, “Gamzee, what have you done?” 

Because he’s a miracle given shape, that’s why he bends and breaks your script, and all of you throbs with want and love and softens just for him. 

And because, despite it all, you do love him, honestly and sincerely, you tell it exactly like it is. 

“Anything that need doing,” which is true enough and probably less horrifying that an in detailed list of everything you’ve actually done, will eventually get done. “Done deal, best motherfucking friend, chill your soul about it.” 

“Oh that’s rich, coming from you,” Karkat snorts, rubbing his face with his hands, and then reaching out and rubbing your face with his hands. You choke on a giggle as he smears paint and oil, and laugh harder when you remember that’s a sacrilege, right there, culling offense, no questions asked. Karkat goes on, shaky but growing in momentum as he goes, “you’re a pustulent bag of festering leeches attached to the shitgash of trollkind’s collective seedflap, Makara.” You grin and he squeezes your cheeks, trying to burrow the expression down even as he starts cracking around the edges himself. “And when this so call shit is all over, I am going to strangle you so hard, I reserve the right to be angry at you approximately forever when it’s all said and done.” 

You reach out and kiss his nose, eyes dancing with mischief when he snarls up at you, offended. 

“He’ll be back, best friend, and you can have your fish bitch back if you want him, by then.” You reach out and lick his cheek, because it never fails to make him shriek in the back of his throat, positively furious. “But you ain’t got no choice on whether you have this motherfucker, before or after, ‘cause he be only doing what needs doing, for your own miraculous sake.” 

Karkat sighs, a full body symphony of release folded in a single sound. He sags into your arms and lazily reaches out a hand to poke your cheek. 

“I’ve missed you, you misbegotten mad goat of a troll,” he says, defeat and wariness melting into foam, “do you understand how fucked up it is that I missed you? I shouldn’t have missed you at all, you murderous hilaribad murderclown shit.” He pokes you again, harder, but he’s smiling now, tense all over. “Don’t fucking grin at me, you bastard, tell me how you’ve been.” 

And because he’s your moon and sun and stars, because he’s back where he belongs and he’s finally gotten all his understanding on, as much as he’s gonna get anyway, you do. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Askblog for this verse.](http://requisitionforms.tumblr.com)


End file.
